Basically anchoring classical conditioning

And in this podcast, we talk about how we’re all affected by anchors. We’ve all been conditioned to respond to different stimuli in particular ways. To a certain extent, it’s a very natural process. For example, hearing a specific song or piece of music (stimulus) causes you to respond with a certain feeling — perhaps feeling upbeat, romantic or even sad. But anchors can also be used in much less ‘natural’ ways.

Anchors can be both positive and negative

Without awareness of what you’re anchored to, you’ll have less personal control over your day to day behaviours. You might never have realised how much you’re being manipulated by advertisers, social media and other people.

In this podcast, I give plenty of examples of how anchoring is used, both consciously and unconsciously. This will not only give you some insights into how anchoring might be affecting you but also ways to prevent that manipulation.

Training your pets

I describe how I used anchoring to teach my parrot to do tricks — and how he then started training me! And we discuss ways to train your pets — or children — successfully! I also show ways you can become aware of the anchors you respond to so that you’re not living life on auto-pilot. When you can recognise the anchors, you can lessen or eliminate their power over you.

How to sell more cars

There’s also a commercial example of an expensive European car brand, that used anchoring to sell more of their top-end cars. In this case, they called it ‘experiential marketing’. But, when you hear the description of what they did, it’s pretty apparent it was a manipulative attempt to sell lots of new cars. It worked pretty well too.